Gethsemane
by Bamboozlepig
Summary: Sequel to "Angel's Miracle". As Craig Brice's Christmas Eve shift continues, he is forced to face his inner demons, dealing with the revelations and truths he has kept hidden from himself for a long time.


**UPDATE 2/01/13: **I had a guest reviewer ask if there was going to be a second chapter to this and I want to let everyone know that yep, I've got at least four more chapters planned to this story and I have not in any way abandoned it. Unfortunately, I just have not had the time to sit down and do much writing, real life has done the ol' story interruptus on me and I have been busy dealing with other things.

**DISCLAIMER**: Emergency! is the property of MarkVII/Universal and no copyright infringement is intended with the publication of this piece. The snippet of the "Sounds Of Silence" lyrics used in this chapter are property of Simon & Garfunkel and again, no copyright infringement intended. **ALL ****ORIGINAL STORY CONTENT IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF BAMBOOZLEPIG AND MAY NOT BE USED WITHOUT PERMISSION. This story may contain graphic language/violence/adult situations, therefore reader discretion is advised. **This story is a sequel to "Angel's Miracle", so if you haven't read that piece, you will probably want to because this picks up in the moments right after that one ended. I will caution readers that it's extremely Brice-centric, with a strong secondary character in Chet, and at times, both of them may be out-of-canon with the show portrayals.

GETHSEMANE

_Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain  
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me  
Remembering again that I shall die  
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks  
For washing me cleaner than I have been  
Since I was born into this solitude.  
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:  
But here I pray that none whom once I loved  
Is dying to-night or lying still awake  
Solitary, listening to the rain,  
Either in pain or thus in sympathy  
Helpless among the living and the dead,  
Like a cold water among broken reeds,  
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,  
Like me who have no love which this wild rain  
Has not dissolved except the love of death,  
If love it be towards what is perfect and  
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.—"Rain" by Edward Thomas, 1916_

He is drowning.

Even as the lyrics of the Christmas carol die away from his lips, even as he stands in the middle of the stationhouse kitchen that smells like popcorn and hot cocoa, even as he is surrounded by his joyous shiftmates that are celebrating the amazing survival of Angel Rodriguez, their little five-year-old shooting victim in the botched grocery store robbery of earlier, Craig Brice is _drowning_ and the only life preservers he has are the plastic-wrapped candy cane that someone…Chet?...shoved into his hands and himself.

And neither can save him, not right now.

Maybe not ever.

DROWNING_: to suffocate by submersion in water; to soak or drench in a liquid; to engage oneself deeply in something; to overwhelm…_a simple two-syllable word for a very frightening way to die.

He is no stranger to it, for as a child, his two brothers used to love to torment him by holding him beneath the glassy surface of their swimming pool, laughing as he thrashed about, fighting frantically to get free, the chlorine stinging his eyes and his lungs burning for oxygen as the cool, crystal blue water plugged his ears and nose and mouth, making him feel claustrophobic, cut off from the vital world around him. Then just as his vision would start to dim and his chest felt like it would explode from holding his breath for so long, and the roaring in his ears was the sound of his own blood slowing in his veins, his brothers would release him, allowing him to shoot to the surface and shriek air back into his starved lungs, glaring at them as he hacked up acrid spurts of water, his head throbbing and his heart still racing as he tried hard not to cry at their mindless cruelty.

But this is not the crystal blue waters of his childhood that is drowning him here in the kitchen of Station 51, this is the blank, black waves of his own repressed emotions that is threatening to suck him under, stealing the breath from his lungs and stilling him into silence as he struggles like a dinosaur against the La Brea tar pits of his own pale ghosts and dark memories, fighting through the thick morass of his grief and guilt and shame.

And it scares him.

It REALLY scares him.

Because he doesn't like drowning and he doesn't like dying.

And he particularly does not like the helpless sense of losing control, for if there is one thing Craig Brice thrives upon, it is control.

And losing control breaks his rules, and rules are the second thing he lives by, for rules and control are the backbone principles that drive his life, keeping it tidy and uncluttered. Crisp conformity makes him happy and nothing pleases him more than to take a scene of utter screaming chaos and restore it to quiet, neat order via a prodigious application of rules and control, hence his nicknames of "The Walking Rulebook" and "The Perfect Paramedic". Gifted with the ability to remain calm and collected in the face of minor catastrophes and major disasters, he refuses to let his personal perceptions and feelings prejudice him and therefore potentially clutter up his diagnoses and treatment protocols, for the number one rule of paramedicine is his mantra to live by…_Never let yourself get emotionally involved with your patients. _And Craig Brice follows it with a religious fervor that crossed the line from dewy-eyed devotion into rabid fanaticism a _long_ time ago, treating his patients with a dispassionately clinical detachment, dispensing the prescribed treatments and solutions with a briskly brutal efficiency that gets the job done, albeit with little warmth or empathy…_not_ that he doesn't care about those he is treating in the field, because if he didn't give a damn about humanity, he never would've gone into the fire service, but he doesn't like the fear and hysteria that often pervades the incidents he works. The emotions of others are often messy, shrilling little creatures that are uncontrollable and highly unpredictable, refusing to follow any rules imposed upon them in an attempt to restore order, so Brice keeps a tight rein on his own emotions, presenting an impassive face and calmly non-reactive attitude in hopes of leading by example and showing that panic and hysteria serve absolutely no purpose in awful situations, other than to make things worse. So if _never let yourself get emotionally involved with your patients _is his primary mantra, his secondary mantra is _don't feel._

_Don't feel,_ he tells himself when he is doing CPR on an elderly gentleman who has collapsed at a family gathering honoring the man's 85th birthday, the horror-stricken and tearful faces of the man's loved ones etched on the dark screens of his eyelids when he blinks, his own heart heavy as he watches Dixie pull the sheet up over the man's face, the monitor stilled into silence and the wires and tubes spewing from the body a valiant testament to the fight to save the old man, the acrid taste of his own failure mingled with the sour taste of the man's vomit on his lips a bitter reminder of the battle he lost this day.

_Don't feel,_ he tells himself when he views the twisted, smoking wreckage that is scattered across four lanes of interstate traffic, the broken bodies still pinned inside what is left of their vehicles, his analytical mind trying to make sense of the wreck that is the result of someone's drunkenness, someone's stupidity, someone's recklessness, and he knows he will hear the one survivor…a small child…scream piteously for her deceased mother in his ears for weeks to come.

_Don't feel,_ he tells himself as he carries out the ragdoll-limp body of a child from a burning home that was set aflame by someone's carelessness, the heat of the flames that roared and lashed fiery tongues at him searing his skin a sunburnt pink that he doesn't even feel as he peels off his air mask and gloves, his fingers fumbling to feel for a pulse in the little boy's neck that he knows won't be there, judging from the child's blackened, blistered skin and vacantly staring eyes, and he knows the stink of charred wood and burnt flesh will linger in his nose for days afterward.

_Don't feel_, he tells himself as he stares into the bedroom of a house where a standoff has just ended in mayhem, the young couple of the house having been brutally murdered by a jealous, spurned suitor, the killer's vengeance apparent in the blood-slickened machete that pins the male victim to the bed like some grotesque bug in a scientific display; in the girl whose head has been nearly severed from her body in a gaping, leering slash; in the smearing splatter of blood and bone and brains as the killer took his final vengeance on himself, sticking the barrel of his sawed-off shotgun in his mouth and killing himself at the foot of the bed, even as the police rushed the house….and as the bone crackles and the brain matter squishes and the blood squelches beneath his tread as he crosses the bedroom to deliver the official verdict of death for the waiting investigators, he _knows_ he's going to be seeing THAT gruesome, ghastly scene in his nightmares for a long, long time.

_Don't feel, don't feel, don't feel…_

And so he doesn't.

At least not on the outside, he doesn't.

The departmental wags have picked up on his impassivity and calm exterior and tagged him with a new nickname, one that hisses sibilantly along derisive tongues as it is whispered sneeringly under breaths and behind backs…._Cold As Ice Brice. _Even his crewmates at his home station of 16's call him "Mr. Spock" or "The Dalek" and his partner, Bob Bellingham, jokes that if one were to open up Brice's skull and peer inside, they'd likely find blinking circuit boards and colored wires instead of human flesh and blood. And the people he encounters in the field are even less kind, calling him a cold-hearted bastard or anal-retentive asshole or fucking heartless sonofabitch, and he sometimes hears those terms several times over the course of a shift, just because he refuses to show any emotion.

He shrugs it off…he shrugs it _all _off with blank-faced ambivalence, the blue-grey eyes behind the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses blinking complacently at the cruelties lobbed at the man who often seems more like an unfeeling automaton than a human being. _Don't get emotionally involved, don't react, don't feel, _ he repeats to himself in a constant loop in his head, because he doesn't need anyone's acceptance or approval, nor does he really care if people like him or not…he knows he's damned good at what he does, his gilt-edged certificates of honor and gleaming golden trophies of achievement and shiny satin ribbons of praise assure him of that fact.

And he goes home after each horrific scene to his gilt-edged certificates and golden trophies and bright satin ribbons of praise, turning on all the lights in his apartment to stave off the nightmares he knows will come the moment he closes his eyes, wrapping yet another layer of razor-wire around that icy-brittle and easily-broken heart of his to protect it…

To protect the man who is afraid to live because of it.

For growing up as the sensitive middle child in a family that was helmed by a set of coldly austere parents who repressed their feelings behind sleety blizzards of silence, and saddled with a pair of predatory brothers who could sniff out any hint of emotional distress and feast on it like vultures, Craig quickly learned how to shield himself behind a façade of icy implacability, using that impenetrable chilly remoteness to prevent his brothers from finding any weakness that they could exploit or use against him, viewing the world with a disdainfully haughty superiority that soon became his neat little square-dance sidestep that skirts him around all that he does not wish to face…

Including himself.

A veritable Houdini when it comes to the art of avoidance, he skillfully twists out of those tightly wrapped straitjackets of cloying feelings and swiftly escapes from those locked trunks full of soggy sentimentality that he fears would turn him into a sniveling chump. He rides out the nightmares that haunt him in self-enforced solitude, staring blindly up at his ceiling, because he tells himself that to share his fears with someone is to reveal his flaws and faults and he doesn't want to give that power over himself to _anyone_, so he takes everything…unsightly emotions and silly fears, annoying doubts and nagging insecurities, chain rattling spectors and darkly stirred memories, but most of all _himself_…and he tucks it all away into boxes in his mind, locking them behind the solid steel fortress he has built within himself, telling himself that he'll deal with it all eventually, maybe someday…except eventually, maybe someday has never really come.

Until tonight, that is.

Tonight that impenetrable icy shield melted and that razor wire slashed the heart it was supposed to protect, and he stands alone amidst the rusted wreckage of his inner fortress, the steely walls of his personal Jericho tumbling down around him when a dying child in a Christmas angel costume came along and ripped the lids off of Pandora Brice's tidy little boxes, unleashing everything he has tried hard to dam up and deny within him…anger, sorrow, guilt, shame, hatred, fear…leaving behind only the hope.

And as he looks down at the candy cane clutched in his grasp, he wonders bitterly if even the hope remains to him.

Or really…

If it was ever there at all.

Because he's afraid there really is no hope left to the drowning man…no hope that he will be rescued from the dark waves thrashing around him, no hope that someone out there will grab his flailing hand and pull him up, will hear his screams for help and toss him a life-preserver to cling to just as he is about to go under for the last time. And he'll be _damned _if he screams for help here…in his nightmares, maybe, but not here, and besides, he's afraid that if he starts screaming now…

He may never stop.

And anyway, what the hell can he say without sounding like a goddamned fool? _Hey, you know that last call we just handled where the kid in the angel costume nearly died on us during transport? Well, that's stirred up some troublesome emotions and memories and I was wondering if I could maybe talk to you about it…_

Yeah, right.

Craig Brice does not _have_ emotions.

Craig Brice does not _have _problems.

And most importantly, Craig Brice does _not_ discuss any personal issues with _anyone, _not even with himself.

Plus there really isn't anyone for him to talk to anyway, because while he participates in various committees and organizations within the fire department, he's not really rich in friends, for no one wants to hang around the man whose rigid anal-retentiveness and windchilled personality makes for awkward socialization…oh sure, Bob Bellingham is a good friend, his easy-going tolerance and sunny persona a nice thawing foil for persnickety ice man Brice, but Bellingham is with family down in San Diego for the holiday weekend, and Craig is not going to call and bother Bob with his silly little troubles. The staff at Rampart is out…Brackett's too brisk, Early is too kind, Morton's too much like Brice himself, and he is reluctant to bare his soul to Nurse McCall, having had to bare his ass to her in the past in order to be treated for injuries.

Drifting on the currents of conversation around him, his eyes flicker over his shiftmates here at Station 51 where he is subbing for a vacationing John Gage, his gaze weighing each man for consideration as his personal confessor and just as swiftly rejecting them…Roy is his partner, but Brice has clashed with him in the past and he fears Roy might hold that against him; Captain Stanley will likely suggest that Craig seek assistance from the departmental shrink and the LAST think he wants is to have his every thought deeply psychoanalyzed by some grim-faced psychiatrist who will diagnose him with mommy issues and send him on his way with the admonition to return next week, maybe by then he'll be cured. Mike Stoker looks trustworthy, but Brice worries Mike might be into the self-help mumbo jumbo that is all the rage right now and he really doesn't want to learn how to balance his chakra or cleanse his aura or enjoy a healthier lifestyle via macrobiotic cooking. Marco Lopez is friendly, even to him, but he knows Marco is also deeply spiritual, not to mention an excellent cook, and he might tell Brice he needs to pray for guidance, then offer him some fantastic guacamole recipes, and Brice isn't religious, nor is he a fan of foods that are unnaturally green or avocado-y.

So that leaves Chet Kelly and the answer to that is an unequivocally firm, no-fucking-way-in-hell, absolutely, positively NOT. After all, Chet is the merry little Phantom who poured glitter into Brice's helmet so that when Brice put it on, he wound up looking like some oversized kindergarten craft project gone amok, plus Chet has short-sheeted his bed, put a whoopie cushion on his chair during dinner, and replaced his toothpaste with a tube of Ben-Gay. And Brice can tolerate the pranks like the whoopie cushion and short-sheeting the bed, and even the Ben-Gay gag, but he was washing glitter out of his hair for at least a week, and despite having his uniform thoroughly cleaned, hints of gleaming bits still shone from the fabric for months afterward, making him feel like he should be hanging from the ceiling of Studio 54 as a spinning disco ball, rather than fighting fires.

No, he is alone with everything that is weighing upon him tonight, his misery settling like a leaden loaf of bread in his gut, and sighing heavily at the realization, he scours hard at his temples in an attempt to evict the USC-Trojan Marching Band that is clattering disharmoniously about the tight confines of his skull, scowling in annoyance at the cheery currents of conversation going on around him about little Angel's amazing survival…Christ, it's not that his Grinchy little heart isn't just as pleased as the others over Nurse McCall's good news that the child made it through the emergency surgery done to remove the bullet from her gut, but he's getting sick and tired of the cavalier way that everyone is throwing around the terms _miracle_ and _savior,_ acting like he and Roy were some kinda goddamned heroes for the frantic work they did on the kid when she started crashing on them en route to Rampart Hospital. Any other time he is more than happy to smugly accept back-patting accolades, but this time he is uneasy at wearing that mantle of high praise, feeling like a cockroach swimming in the duck sauce at a black-tie dinner or a turd floating in the pristine pool of an exclusive country club, completely undeserving of the congratulatory esteem being lauded upon him because if his shiftmates besides Roy knew what _really_ happened in the back-end of that Mayfair rig as it sped screaming towards Rampart, they'd hate him and revile him, castigating him and condemning him to hell…

Not that he hasn't already done those things himself.

Chet drapes a friendly arm around his shoulders, slapping him on the back and calling him a hero once more, and he twists away with a grimace because _damn it_, he _doesn't_ believe in saviors, he _doesn't _believe in miracles, and he SURE as hell ain't no goddamned hero…

Because heroes don't _break._

_ (Her blood)_

And heroes don't _fail._

_ (Is on)_

At least not like HE did tonight.

(_His hands)_

Oh _**GOD **_he's replayed that scene of split-second eternity in the back of the rig about a million times over in his head and he knows he'll replay it another million more in the hours and days and weeks to come, seeing it on the blank screens of his eyelids when he blinks, hearing it in the echoes that still ring hollow in his ears, reliving it in his nightmares, and closing his eyes, he sees it now…the shy little dark-haired girl who had been so damply-eyed stoic and trembly-lipped brave throughout her ordeal suddenly going silent, the monitor screaming in shrill alarm for her as her brown eyes swiftly went blank, her blood rapidly staining her white Christmas angel costume a garish red of obscenity, splashing his uniform and his hands and dripping onto the floor of the rig like great crimson drops of accusation, and all he could do…

_Oh god, all he could do… _

He froze up.

The man known as the Perfect Paramedic…

_**HE FUCKING FROZE UP!**_

Roy…good ol' solidly dependable godsend Roy…swiftly leaped into action and shoved him out of the way in order to start lifesaving measures on her, and as Brice slammed back into the jumpseat of the ambulance with a bone-jarring thump, all he could think was that he was NOT seeing Angel Rodriguez dying in the here and the now of that very minute, but another child dying in the there and the then of a rainy Christmas Eve fifteen years ago…

But then, no matter how many different forms and visages Death can take, it always looks the same as it stares back at you from clouding, cooling eyes…vacant and eerie and oh so cold.

And much like the gaze that sometimes stares back at him from his mirror.

Of course, he recovered quickly from his temporary freeze-up and was able to properly assist Roy in lifesaving protocols until they got the girl into Rampart, but his coldly analytical mind struggles against his confused emotional mind, trying to explain _why _his reaction to the dying girl was so…so _visceral,_ the connection between the child now and the child back then startling him because it's not like he hasn't seen injured kids before, or even dead kids, but this child…_this_ child and her tragic dark eyes that stared up at him over her tragic dark circumstances, her gaze mutely begging him to save her, it slammed him hard in the gut and stole the breath from his lungs and made his very soul ache as he watched her fight for life the same way he watched the other child fifteen years ago swiftly give up his life in a single whispered exhalation of shock as Brice frantically tried to stop the lava flow of blood that erupted from the volcano of the boy's throat…not that that child ever had a chance…

Not that this child has a chance, either.

He's not stupid, he knows that while the surgery may have been successful in keeping the girl alive, she still has a long road of recovery ahead of her and he doesn't want to get his hopes up like the others so foolishly have that Angel's life will be one miracle after another because he knows…_he knows…_

Miracles don't exist.

Because if they did, there'd been a miracle on that _other_ rainy Christmas Eve, oh so long ago.

Not that it stopped him from praying for one, both then and now, because even diehard atheists find themselves in a few war-torn foxholes now and then. And sometimes God listens to the pleas of the frantic, of the frightened, of the damned…

And other times He doesn't.

Detaching himself from the others, he wanders across the dayroom, Henry the Bassett hound giving him a hopeful gaze from his perennial perch on the burgundy leather sofa, but Brice bypasses the sad-eyed dog, going over to the Christmas tree in the corner instead. He studies it with vague disinterest…as trees go, it's a little on the shabby side, the artificial branches balding a bit and faded in some spots, a strand of multicolor twinkle lights and entwined ropes of red and gold garland that are shedding as bad as the tree trying hard to enliven it up a bit. Careworn ornaments litter about the branches, little wooden gingerbread men and cotton-ball snowmen grinning alongside plastic Santas and candy canes and gleaming orbs of various hues, and wrapped around the base of the tree is a yellow shock blanket upon which empty boxes have been wrapped up to resemble gifts. Any other time Brice would vociferously complain about the flagrantly inappropriate misuse of fire department equipment, but right now he doesn't give a shit if the tree were decorated with splints, rolls of bandages and adhesive tape, bags of Ringers and IV tubing…hell, they could even have the defibrillator and the biophone wrapped in shiny red bows beneath the tree and he wouldn't give a damn.

He catches sight of his reflection in one of the smooth silver balls dangling delicately from a branch, his bespectacled features comically misshapen, his uniform marred with Angel's blood that has dried in a stiff purple splash across the blue cloth, looking much like a grotesque Christmas ornament himself. It's certainly not the first time he's worn someone's blood on his clothing, for serving two tours as a medic aboard one of the Dustoff evac choppers over in Vietnam, plus going into the fire/paramedic service when he got home has placed him in situations where he has been splashed with all sorts of bodily fluids, from blood to spit, to shit and piss and vomit, and usually the bloodstains represent a hard fought and sometimes barely won battle against Death. Scrubbing a hand down his face, an involuntary shudder convulses through him at the faint coppery scent that lurks behind the sharply antiseptic smell of Rampart's hand soap, and he lowers his hand to stare at the maroon flakes that remain stubbornly embedded within the whorls of his fingerprints and palms, knowing that this is no proud badge of gory glory he wears tonight…no, _this_ clings to him like a stinking miasma, tattooing his skin and searing his heart and his soul like a white-hot brand of shame, reminding him of his failure both now and from fifteen years ago…

_Aye,_ the crimson stain of innocent blood upon pale guilty hands doesn't feel any better the second time around.

Sighing, he glances down at his uniform, knowing he should go get changed before Captain Stanley puts the squad back in service, but he lingers in front of the tree, his gaze drawn to the angel atop it, looking as out of place as he feels. She clearly has been lovingly handmade, her white satin gown sporting a delicate lace overlay that is dotted with tiny seed pearls, while her arched fluffy wings are made from real feathers. The small gold halo above her black shining curls is trimmed with a wisp of gold garland, and her pale bisque face is carefully painted with rosy cheeks and blue eyes and long dark lashes, her dainty hands folded before her in prayer. Struck by her exquisite, simple beauty, he thinks of the other little angel that lay dying on the cot in front of him, her coat hanger halo bent and the garland ripped fluttering from it, her oaktag wings smashed and torn, her white satin nightgown stained with her own blood, and his fingers close tightly around the candy cane he still holds, snapping it into bits as he struggles to resist the urge to tear the lovely ornament from the tree and stomp it to bits beneath his blood-stained boot heel, rendering it as broken and forever damaged as that little girl in the hospital.

"She's pretty, isn't she?" says a soft voice beside him, and startled, he turns to find Marco standing there, smiling up at the angel with pride shining from his dark eyes. "My sister, Rosalie, she made her just for our station, said we needed something beautiful to grace our sad little tree." He glances over at Brice. "I love Christmas, it's such a wonderful time of the year, don't you think?"

"I don't celebrate Christmas," Brice tells him sharply, his icy shield swiftly snapping into place.

Marco gives him a surprised look. "You don't? Why not?"

"I…" Brice hesitates, for he has a whole set of reasons that he usually spouts off as to why he hates Christmas and refuses to celebrate it, finding all the jubilant annoyances that go with the holiday it rather irritating, from the glittering decorations to the tinny carols that begin squealing from store speakers on November 1st and don't let up until December 26th; to the stupid Christmas specials that clog the tv airwaves to the Salvation Army bell ringers that plead for donations with the peals of their bells and sad yearning eyes; to the greedy consumerism and crass commercialism that runs rampant as holiday shoppers clog the stores, bleating and shoving madly like crazed sheep as they flock to spend their hard-earned money on cheaply made crap that will be broken and forgotten by New Year's Day. He's never been able to suspend his imagination long enough to allow himself to believe in elves and flying reindeer and a jolly old fat man in a red suit that flies around the world and hands out gifts to deserving kiddies, and he believes even less in the cloying mysticism and devoutly pompous religiosity that encourages the masses to pay hypocritically pious lip service to a deity they ignore the other 363 days of the year. He pays his own hypocritical lip service to all those excuses and uses them to shield the _real_ reason why he hates the holiday, and that is because the child that died on that rainy Christmas Eve so much like this one, the child he'd tried so hard to save fifteen years ago to this very _day_…

It was his brother.

His _brother._

Craig was only thirteen when Donnie, his eleven-year-old younger brother was accidentally shot and killed with their father's .22 rifle by their fifteen year old brother, Gary, the death forever ending Christmas as the Brice family knew it, the tragedy bleeding all the bright color from the season and leaving only funeral blacks and mourning greys to wrap the festivities in, the joy muted by sorrow and silver-edged guilt. A decade and a half later and the holidays still hold no joy for Brice…it's the reason why he doesn't bother putting up a tree or decorating his apartment; it's the reason why he doesn't send out any holiday cards or exchange gifts; it's the reason why he doesn't go home to Florida to see his parents in Gainesville; it's the reason why he takes on as much work as he possibly can over the holidays, throwing himself into his job in hopes of staving off that black whirlpool of guilt and ghosts and memories that threaten to suck him into their deadly undertow every year at this time.

And it's the reason why he stops living the day after Thanksgiving and doesn't start living again until after New Year's Day.

_It's the only way he can survive_.

If you can call what he does surviving, locking himself away in that chilly fortress of his, hiding out so he doesn't have to think, doesn't have to feel, doesn't have to remember his own damningly guilty role in his brother's death.

Marco reaches out, touching him lightly on the shoulder. "Craig, are you okay?" he asks gently, his face an etch of concern.

Brice flinches away from the touch, agony flickering momentarily across his features. "I'm…" he begins, and then suddenly that drowning sensation sweeps over him once more and hits him hard, the dark waters of his own churning mind suffocating him with their blackness, plugging up his ears and raging in his gut, and he knows he has to get out of there or die right there in the dayroom in front of that mangy little tree and that perfect gleaming angel and all that goddamned fucking goodwill towards men, not to mention the five men that are the jury that will condemn and despise him if they knew the cold hard truth about Craig Brice. He jerks a thumb at the side door, his body swiftly following it. "I need to get something from my car," he rattles out, and it's a lie, but it's the only one he can think of to use to escape the warm camaraderie of the kitchen that is killing him, eagerly trading it for the chilly, rain-drenched loneliness of the darkness that embraces him like a long-lost brother as he flees outside.

Sucking in deep lungfuls of rain-cooled air to calm himself, he paces discontentedly beneath the dripping overhang, his breath fogging out before him as if his ghosts are trying to escape him just as much as he's trying to escape them, driven restless by a nervous energy that courses through his body like static electricity. At his sides, his hands tighten into fists, and as something crackles sharply in his palm, he opens it, gazing down at the candy cane he still holds, the pink and red candied threads that wind around the busted white stick of peppermint matching the red and pink scrapes that scar raw across the white bones of his knuckles, a painful reminder of his tornadic-fury fist fight with the cinderblock wall of the men's john at Rampart. He stares at the crushed frivolity of it, then with a frustrated growl, he steps out from beneath the overhang into the driveway and draws his fist back like a pitcher winding up, throwing the candy cane as hard as he can, his eyes tracing the neat, high arc that swiftly carries the striped treat sailing down the drive and landing out in the street where it is promptly run over by a Cadillac whooshing by. "Hah!" he chortles with sour glee at the innocent candy's ultimate demise, and then it dawns on him with a dart of shock…in addition to murdering a piece of Christmas cheer, he also just littered, and yet strangely the two act of breaking a rule does not fill him with the shame he expects himself to feel over disobeying Woodsy the Owl and not giving enough of a hoot not to pollute. He shrugs...oh well, Woodsy can go get plucked for all he cares right now.

Rolling the sweet taste of his own apathy on his tongue, he turns his face to the sodden sky, enjoying the rain as it weeps down, for growing up in Gainesville, he used to love the thunderstorms and hurricanes that would pound the city, turning the world an eerie grey-murky-green and stilling it into humidly hushed silence until the storm hit, pulsing with a wild violence that he found strangely beautiful as the rain lashed and the wind howled and the hail hammered furiously down, the storms scouring the earth clean and recasting it reborn to the world like a shiny new penny, at least for a little while. He looks down at his bloodied uniform, the blue shirt and twill jacket splotched with the moisture that lies in quivering crystals against his skin, prisming upon his glasses, glistening like teardrops on his lashes, and he notices that the dried droplets of blood that mar the black leather of his boots have been renewed to life, bleeding down the surface in murky maroon traces. Spotting a nearby puddle, he gathers himself into a jump, landing hard in the pooled water, sending it flashing up in a satisfyingly sharp slap that cascades over his boots, rinsing them off, and for a fleeting moment, he feels like a child again, stomping through the puddles and playing in the rain.

He stares at the traces of blood on his palms once more, then raising his eyes to the heavily pregnant clouds lumbering overhead, his heart aches little-boy like as he wishes the rain could cleanse not only the blood that stains him, but also everything else that tarnishes him, washing his bitter and broken soul from all that blackens it and sorrows it and weighs it down. Impulsively he thrusts his hands above his head, stretching towards the grey-black sky, then a flash of lightning stabs a vicious knife across the sky, startling him, making him suck in a sharp breath that tastes of rainwater and smog as the lightning illuminates everything in split-second white-edged clarity, then thunder slams a heavy, angry fist right over his head, forcing him to scurry back beneath the safety of the overhang. He peeks out from beneath the roof with a pouting scowl, glowering up at the heavens that seemingly mock and mirror his own turmoiled dissention. "Oh yeah?" he challenges boldly, shaking his own fist at the waddling clouds. "Well, fuck you too!" He flips the sky the middle finger for emphasis, then with a dissatisfied growl, he settles back against the building in a boneless slouch, his hands shoved into the pockets of his blue twill jacket…who the hell is HE to think that the rain could cleanse his soul and his heart from all of his guilt and hurt and deep black sorrow? It'd take a thousand oceans of rainstorms to accomplish that heavy task. His tongue sweeps away the raindrops from his lips and he grimaces, for the taste of it…

It is bitter ashes on his tongue.

Listening to the rain hammer at the overhang, his fingers nervously telegraph out a frantic S.O.S. against the cellophane-wrapped box that he hastily purchased from a vending machine while still at Rampart and shoved into his pocket, and for a moment his tongue clicks sharp against the roof of his mouth in accompaniment to the Morse code being tattooed out by his fingers…_dit dit dit, dah dah dah, dit dit dit…_then he smirks in sourly amused irony as it dawns on him what he's doing, for if there was EVER anyone in dire distress and in need of rescue right now, it's him. Then the smirk fades as he realizes he's the only one that can truly save himself and he's already proven what a crappy savior he really is, so with a shiver he hunches his shoulders and buries himself deeper within the shadows of the building, allowing the blank darkness to swallow him up, along with all of his black sins and shames…

And lord knows he certainly has enough of them, especially tonight.

_Christ, I could really use a cigarette right now,_ he thinks as he goes ahead and pulls the cellophane box from his pocket, his fingers grasping the thin gold thread to break the seal. Then he stops, staring at the white flip-top box with the distinctive red bullseye, the words "Lucky Strike" in black print across the center of the bullseye…smoking was one of the few vices over in Vietnam that he took up, for he rarely dabbled in gambling or drinking the rotgut hootch that passed for booze over there, and he only occasionally engaged the services of the weary prostitutes that plied their trade just outside of camp, for he was afraid of catching a venereal disease from the shabby little rice-paddy whores. But he gave up smoking when he returned home and went into the fire department, replacing the soothing calm of nicotine with prodigious amounts of peppermint Lifesavers and the physical exertion of jogging, his feet pounding out his stress and worries against the miles of pavement that passed beneath his shoes. Yet he knows he can't go jogging now and he could eat through the roll of peppermint Lifesavers he carries in his pocket in no time flat, so he fidgets, his fingers toying restlessly with the gold thread as he debates whether or not to break his abstinence, his craving strong as he gazes at the pack of Lucky Strikes like they're some kind of a magical divining rod that can tell him which way to jump.

_Fuck it,_ he shrugs, deciding that since he's already fallen so far tonight from his lofty standards and broken several of his self-set rules, he might as well tumble the rest of the way into the total antithesis of himself, Craig Brice being the anti-Brice, the black and white negative of his perfect color self. He rips the pack of cigarettes open with a grim yank of the thread, holding the gilt-edged shard of cellophane out before him and releasing it to the wind that snatches it up, sending it swirling in loopy circles before the rain pounces and slams it back to the pavement in a vicious kill. With a thumb, he flips the top of the Luckies open, bringing the pack up to his nose and inhaling the sweet, rich scent of the tobacco a moment before he plucks a cigarette free from its neat row of brethren, placing it between his lips as he tucks the pack back into his jacket pocket, rummaging in his trouser pocket and retrieving the black Zippo lighter he always carries with him. He cradles the lighter in his palm, studying it, the dull finish chipped and pocked with the scars it has rightfully earned…it was a good luck gift from Gary, given right before Craig shipped out overseas, and probably the last decent thing Gary ever did for him. His fingers close tight around the warm metal, then with a swift flash of movement, the Zippo spins deftly in his hand, the metal slipping smoothly like dark mercury in his grasp, the hinged lid of the lighter flicking open as the flywheel sets the wick alight, the heel of his other hand bumping the Zippo and sending it twirling into the air, the flame flashing like a firefly in the darkness as he catches it effortlessly. Twisting away and cupping a protective palm around the cigarette as he sets it alight, the smoke slipstreams like dragon's breath and the Zippo's fire glittering like devil eyes in the lenses his glasses as he flicks the lid shut with a snap of his wrist, tucking the lighter away with a self-satisfied smirk…yeah, he's still got some of those badass trick moves he learned over in Vietnam.

He wearily leans against the red brick wall, a solitary figure in blood-spattered blues staring out over a drearily bleak landscape that is as foul and bitter-black as his own mood, wishing like hell he could go home and just crawl into bed…or better yet, crawl into that bottle of Jack Daniels that resides in his cupboard, the smoky-sweet whiskey a fine companion to his cigarette and his ghosts and his bloody, tarnished soul, drinking and drinking and drinking until he has a good, blinding, knock-you-to-your-knees drunk on, because while he's not a fan of the blank blackness that is offered by such total inebriation, god_damn_it, sometimes a man NEEDS to drown himself in the mind-erasing comfort that such fine malt liquor provides in order to wash away the stains of guilt and deep black sorrow that mar his soul…

But then again, he'd need a Biblical flood of whiskey to drown all of _his_ guilts and sorrows.

His tongue flicks across his suddenly parched lips and scrapes sourly across the roof of his dry mouth and he grimaces, taking a deep drag on the cigarette…hell, who's he kidding, he'd fucking drink liquid nitroglycerin with a chaser of lit dynamite if he thought it'd kill the aching pain inside of him.

Or better yet, just kill him, period.

That's not an overly unpleasant thought, after all.

Rolling the cigarette around in his fingers, he stares across the parking lot, listening to the burr and rumble of traffic passing by up on the 405 Freeway that runs behind the station, longing to be out on the open road himself in his blue and white Chevelle, nowhere to go and going nowhere, with only the whine of the tires against the pavement and the staticky radio to keep him company against the metronomic thump of the windshield wipers. Tapping ash off of the end of the cigarette, he idly wonders what would happen if he calmly walked across the lot, climbed into his car, and just fucking _left_…not just this shift, but his whole goddamned life, hopping up on one of the freeways headed out of the city, going north towards the mountains or south towards Mexico, fleeing himself just as much as he's fleeing his coworkers and his duty and his abject failure, not to mention those goddamned ghosts and guilt of his. Oh sure, running away is a rash act and definitely against type for him, but he mulls the idea around in his analytical mind, allowing it to curl warm tendrils of possibility in his stomach…hell, it's not like he has much to keep him here in LA, no real friends or girlfriend, his parents are in Florida and likely wouldn't care, and while Gary lives here, Craig doesn't know where or even give a damn where his brother is at, for he severed ties to his only surviving sibling last year after Gary's final betrayal. And admittedly the notion of doing something shocking like running away enthralls him, for all of his life he has been the dutiful one, the one to do the right thing like the good little boy he is, and for once he'd like to be the bad boy, the rebellious one that does things that earn stunned gasps and raised eyebrows instead of annoyed sighs and derisive eyeball rolls, shedding that stiffly starched persona of Craig Arnold Brice like a butterfly ripping free of its cocoon…maybe he could finally be what he wanted to be before life denied him that opportunity, stripping him of his vivid technicolor dreams, tearing them down and burning them out, replacing them with crisply conforming reality in vanilla-bland black and white. That dark wave he's trying so hard to outrun right now could drown him and erase his existence from the earth, allowing him to be someone different, someone new, someone exciting…

Someone who wasn't afraid to live.

With a snort, he shakes his head, ridding himself of the idea…good god, is he _that_ weak in mind and spirit that all it would take him to walk away from everything that he has worked for, fought for, bled for for 28 years is a dying kid in an angel costume that reminded him of his brother's death? Is he that dishonorable and reckless that he'd just shuck everything on a whim, turning his back on it all without any qualms or pangs of conscience, without ever looking back?

No, he is not that stupid or that dishonorable, he's not that reckless or irresponsible…

_He's not that brave._

Bitterly he realizes he could no more leave his life behind than he could flap his arms and fly, for it would go against his entire moral and ethical code and break down all of the insufferably self-imposed rules he has laid down for himself, tethered to the triple spires of duty and honor and image like a bird with clipped wings. He is Craig Arnold Brice, the Walking Rulebook, the Perfect Paramedic, Cold As Ice Brice…

The haunted man who is afraid to live.

A rill of icy rain drips from the overhang and runs a chilly finger down his back, making him shiver and flip-up the collar of his jacket, the snatch of a song sweeping into his mind and without warning, the lyrics find their way into his voice, carried softly, beautifully, on the pall of rain before him…

_Hello darkness, my old friend,_

_I've come to talk to you again…_

But those two lines are all he gets out as he remembers who he is and where he's at, the words sweetly lingering on the rain as he tries hard not to think of the dark-haired girl with the laughing green eyes that taught him how to play that song on the guitar, for she is yet another memory he does not wish to revisit tonight. "Ghosts," he mutters with a resolute jerk of his chin. "I'm surrounded by nothin' but goddamned ghosts tonight." Behind him he hears the side door open and he stiffens up warily, firmly keeping his back to the unwanted intruder in hopes of driving them off.

"Hey man, whaddaya doin' out here?" Chet Kelly asks, coming up alongside of him, cheerfully suffused yet with the warm camaraderie of earlier.

"I needed to get something from my car," Brice repeats the lie he told Marco when he fled.

Chet jerks a thumb in the direction of the station. "Yeah, well, Cap's wanting to put you and Roy back in service, so you'd better hustle and get your uniform changed."

"Thanks," comes the terse reply.

"The eleven o'clock news is almost on," Chet continues. "Cap said we should be on it, there was a news crew…"

"Good," Brice interrupts with an icily disinterested rebuff, offering a dismissive wave of his hand. "Enjoy."

"Don'tcha wanna see if they at least got the second shooter?" Chet stubbornly lingers, his bright blue eyes studying the man that no one really likes with avid curiosity, innately sensing something lurking beneath the coldness of Brice's exterior; something wounded, something vulnerable, hiding in the stiffness of Brice's turned back, the rigid set of his jaw, his resolute stare out over the parking lot, not to mention the incongruousness of Brice standing out here smoking a cigarette. Brice doesn't reply, so Chet nudges him with a frown. "Hey, Brice, are you okay?"

"Just peachy," Brice returns through gritted teeth, annoyed at being touched…something he heartily dislikes…and irritated at being asked a second time in less than ten minutes if he is okay. Which he is _not, _but he'll be damned if he lets anyone know that, especially an anyone like Chet.

Chet spies the raw pink scrapes across Brice's right hand as Brice lifts the cigarette to his lips, and he gestures to the injury. "What'd you do, beat up a brick wall or somethin'?"

"And if I did?" Brice bares his teeth in a humorless grin before taking a drag on the cigarette. "I fought the wall and the wall won."

"Maybe you shoulda used your head instead, huh?" Chet smirks, for he doesn't mind taking Brice's overly inflated ego down a peg…or fifty…if necessary, just like he deflates Johnny's ego when it starts expanding into mammoth proportions. "You know, I'm surprised you're out here in the rain, considering how dangerous it must be for your health," he observes, and at Brice's puzzled eyebrow raise that is reminiscent of Mr. Spock, Chet steps from beneath the overhang, his arms hugging himself as he twists in place. "I'm melting, I'm melting!" he cries in a falsetto, his face a rictus of fake agony as he gyrates wildly in psuedo-death throes.

Brice snorts, for the Wicked Witch of the West reference is definitely not lost on him. "And shouldn't you be hanging around the Witch's castle with the rest of your flying simian pals, picking your nits and eating them and using your prehensile tail to scratch your ass?" he fires back easily.

A look of surprise flickers across Chet's face, his eyebrows mountain climbing his forehead in shock…holy shit, did Craig Brice, the man so utterly devoid of humor that he cannot enjoy a simple fart joke, just ZING him? "Yeah, well…" Chet sputters, for once at a loss for words. "I didn't know you smoked."

Brice rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "So what if I do?"

"It's just surprising, that's all," Chet says. "With you being so fastidiously anal-retentive about everything, I kinda pegged you as the type of guy who didn't have any unsavory habits or sordid vices, ya know? I mean, they don't call you the Walking Rulebook and the Perfect Paramedic for nothin', man."

Brice is silent, his gaze going distant a moment, then he closes his eyes, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his world. "Kelly, even _I_ break the rules sometimes," he sighs wearily as he drops the cigarette to the ground and crushes it beneath the tread of his boot, turning to go inside the station. He catches Chet's shocked look at his rather cavalier act of littering at leaving the crushed Lucky on the cement and he smirks darkly in response. "And I'm _far_ from perfect, trust me," he says acidly, bitterness scouring his words and flinging them broken into the dripping night, much like the cigarette butt that lies like a busted-up body on the pavement, because right now being broken is his specialty.

And he'll heal when he's dead.


End file.
